We the Oblates of Mary Immaculate stand accused and ashamed of the abuse that happened in St. Conleth’s Reformatory, Daingean. We acknowledge that the system failed the children in our care.
We take responsibility and unreservedly apologise and ask forgiveness for our part in that failure.
In response to the Report of the Ryan Commission and its detailed recommendations on child care, we will make a substantial financial contribution towards the establishment of an independent Trust set up in full consultation with those who have suffered, with the Government, Church leaders and the group of religious congregations involved.
We are contacting the Government to discuss the allocation of these financial resources towards meeting the needs of those who have suffered in our care and to promote the implementation of the recommendations and spirit of the Ryan Report.
We will continue to study the implications of the report for us as Oblates, and we will seek to understand and explain why and how this abuse took place.
For most of his life as an Oblate priest, Father Lorenzo ROSEBAUGH was a living and radical witness to non-violence and concern for the poor. On May 18, 2009, he was shot and killed by two men attempting to steal the van in which he and 4 other Oblates were traveling.
The Lourdes Novena in Inchicore can trace its history back to a Belfast-born Oblate, Fr William Ring, the organiser of the first ever pilgrimage to Lourdes from Britain and Ireland. The year was 1883, and the experience was very different for those early pilgrims.
In early November a provincial assembly, held at the Oblate Retreat Centre in Crewe, marked an important milestone in the ‘re-founding’ process which the Oblates in Britain and Ireland began in January 2007.
Sometime in the night of 28 November, well-known fundraiser for the missions, Fr Jim Butler died suddenly in his room at the Oblate House of Retreat, Dublin. Earlier that evening he had been enjoying his usual leisurely cycle in the grounds.
It is now more than 30 years since Fr Charlie Burrows, a young Oblate priest from Dublin, arrived in Indonesia with three Australian colleagues to establish a mission in Java. He was assigned to the Cilacap region, on the southern coast of the island.
